STEPHEN D. SOLOMON
When I was growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, my father and I were avid baseball fans. He took me to old Connie Mack Stadium to see virtually every night doubleheader the Phillies played. We would arrive by 4 p.m., two hours before the first game, to watch the warm-ups from the bleacher seats. The sharp crack of bat against ball echoed off the empty seats so loudly that it seemed the entire city could hear it.
That exquisite sound was the anthem of my favorite company, Hillerich & Bradsby Co., headquartered in Louisville. They, as every kid in America knew, made the best baseball bat in the world.
The Louisville Slugger, it was called, and as a boy I wanted one badly. But not just any Louisville Slugger; I had my eye on the 34-inch, flame-tempered Henry Aaron model. What a bat! A big, rounded barrel for contact with the ball, tapered to a narrow handle that fit comfortably in my hands, the wood grain singed dark brown to make it look menacing even in the sweaty hands of a 12-year-old.
In my imagination, I knew how that bat was made. Old craftsmen bent for hours over their lathes making each one, pausing long minutes to consider every angle before making a single shaving. Their eyelids were heavy with sawdust, their hands thick with calluses from working their chisels. They stayed long past dark, talking of batting averages and fastballs.
Although 10 bucks was a lot of money for a kid in the early '60s, I eventually hoarded enough stray coins to buy my bat. But I never did visit Hillerich & Bradsby to see if old craftsmen made the bats the way I imagined. Nor did I ever know how large the company was or how it was managed.
In truth, none of that mattered. For me, it was the product that counted, its quality and its mystique. The product was the company.
Today, as I quiz the companies I visit about their subordinated debentures and the arcana of acquisition strategy, I try to remember my 34-inch, flame-tempered Louisville Slugger. I measured that company by the way its bat felt in my hands; that's how I measure companies today.
JOEL KOTKIN
Five years ago I visited a brash Silicon Valley start-up in a small, undistinguished office near the Great American amusement complex outside San Jose, Calif. There I found the usual hype about exploding markets and huge future sales, but also something more unusual -- a sense of mission. At a time when much of Silicon Valley was talking about the "inevitability" of offshore production and the need for some national industrial policy, executives at fledgling Cypress Semiconductor -- led by president T. J. Rodgers -- were shaping a vision of an industrial company that would make people buy American, not from patriotism but because the product was better.
I listened dutifully to Rodgers talk about the company's niche markets and the technical excellence of its team. I'd heard hundreds of similar presentations, but I was struck by the Cypress team itself, a remarkably tight collection of industry veterans and upstart technologists. Like Lenin in October 1917, Rodgers believed that a handful of such good people, with a set strategy and sense of revolutionary mission, could overcome the ancient regime of semiconductor czars who had lorded it over the Valley for the past decade.
On my return to Cypress five years later, it was clear that Rodgers's handful of industrial Bolsheviks were well on their way. They had long ago vacated their tiny offices for a sprawling campuslike complex, complete with a highly automated wafer-fabrication line. Sales had broken the $135-million mark and were climbing. But most impressive of all, of the 10 managers I had interviewed in 1984, only one was no longer there.
In Duluth, such consistency might seem commonplace, but in Silicon Valley -- where people change jobs as often as they change their Porsches -- it was nothing short of astounding. The same low turnover rate applied to the company's production workers as well, Rodgers told me, thanks in part to a bonus plan equaling 10% of profits -- a bonus paid in equal dollar amounts to assembly workers, engineers, and top managers alike.
But money by itself doesn't explain the loyalty. In an era of pervasive self-doubt, particularly about the ability of Americans to compete directly in world markets, Rodgers and his team project a confidence that borders on arrogance. In their new microprocessor -- being developed with architecture licensed from fellow upstart Sun Microsystems Inc. -- they insist Cypress has a product that not only leaves the Japanese in the dust, but soon could push the company's sales beyond such stalwarts as Advanced Micro Devices Inc., where Rodgers and many of the top management used to work.
By the time I left, it seemed clear that Cypress could indeed become the vanguard of a new revolution, with smaller, entrepreneurial U.S. chip firms muscling out both domestic and Japanese producers from key markets. The press and Wall Street, no doubt, will be slow to see the trend. And if the pressure grows too great, it's likely both the domestic chip establishment and its Japanese counterparts will turn to their respective governments for help against the revolutionaries.
Given Cypress's determination and team orientation, I would place my bets on the Silicon Valley Bolsheviks.
MARTHA E. MANGELSDORF
As a business reporter, I strive to be an objective professional. I might succeed -- if it weren't for muffin cups.
My trouble with muffin cups started right after college. I was working for a newspaper in Waterbury, Conn., when I stumbled across Fluted Paper Products Co., the nation's leading manufacturer of the wrappers that keep muffins and cupcakes from sticking to pans. This little local company, I soon discovered, maintained its lead by beating two Fortune 500 paper companies in the marketplace -- and that was enough to make a great story for me.
But it wasn't enough to make Fluted Paper my favorite company. That took Rick Stakel Jr., the company's president. Here was someone who could obviously talk enthusiastically about baking cups for hours -- and use the phrase "muffin mania" with a straight face when describing his market. In short, this man really knew the muffin-cup business -- and loved it.
